Charlie Farley’s in Onetangi is a popular eatery. It has a bar and sells a good assortment of reasonably priced food. It also sells good coffee.
One morning during the weekend the line for coffee was out on the street and not very fast moving. Part way down the line stood our local bald-headed politician (the same one who has a luxury bach on our beach and drove his boat through a rahui because it wasn’t marked) with his bouncer. The Egg goes everywhere with him.
They were getting a tad impatient.
After a bit of muttering The Egg called out, “Would you serve us next, please?”
The barista is rumoured to be Argentinian. He answered, “Listen, Mate, I don’t know who you think you are, but you get served in line, just like everybody else.”
The room was full, everyone else knew who he was, a roar of laughter went up and within seconds there was a phone in every hand.
If the story isn’t true there’s a lot of lying coffee-drinkers on this island.
*
I’m 94, and live alone at the top of a narrow winding road and sometimes go for days without seeing anyone. I’m not lonely, because I have the Herald, the Listener, and of course ReadingRoom. Also I have the luxury of silence to enjoy them.
I also enjoy the company of smartarses like me who enjoy talking about politics, books, current affairs, climate change and other similar trivialities that go well with a glass of wine. We laugh a lot but I can’t tell whether that’s because of the wine or the conversation. We indulge in badinage because most of us are retired, although most of my friends are at least 20 years younger.
My next book is called Anecdotage because that’s what it is. According to my publisher it was too big to be published in one volume because he said it would be too expensive for people to buy. So volume one is called Salad Days and will make you laugh. Volume two is Last Laughs. Once again the publisher insisted on changing things. I’d wanted to call it Last Gasp which it has every chance to become.
I had one anecdote titled “The Vicar’s Balls”, but he changed that too.
It is scheduled to come out in a month or two and I will launch it here.
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Nothing much happens in Onetangi but on New Year’s Eve, something did. It was BIG. A young boy was found on the grounds or driveway of our local bald-headed politician, who seems to be of some importance.
It was reported in both the Herald and the Gulf News. Both reported that the police had been called and the boy was injured. The Herald added, quite gratuitously I thought, that the bach was worth over $7m. Gulf News left that piece of information out.
Neither told us how the boy had been injured or how old he was.
